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Israel’s phoney war

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Marc Goldberg
Marc Goldberg is a copywriter and avid blogger, author of Beyond the Green Line the story of fighting through the
… [More]al Aqsa Intifada in the IDF Paratroopers https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Green-Line-volunteer-Intifada-ebook/dp/B075HBGS21/ [Less]

A lone rocket was fired from Gaza, the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility. The Israeli Air Force then launched 50 strikes against Gaza.

After 50 strikes on Gaza, the terrorists who fired the latest rocket at Sderot still weren’t hit. Think about that. There wasn’t one strike that missed or two, or three but 50. Whoever fired the missile is still at liberty to fire more.

It’s almost as if the strikes weren’t even directed at them…Because they weren’t, you know it, I know it, Hamas knows it. But instead of demanding to know why, with so many strikes none of Israel’s enemies were killed we’re used to it. We get it, some of us even delight in the number 50, seeing it not as a sign of incompetence but delighting in the sheer number of strikes and deciding to disengage the thinking part of our brains.

We’re so used to this pretend little battle that we don’t even care that this game isn’t designed to make Israelis safer, it’s designed to make us dumber.

Now Lieberman is the Defence Minister and he seemingly has to make his point. But what point did he make? That he’s prepared to go to extraordinary lengths with the lives of Israeli pilots to make sure that IAF aircraft don’t hit anything of any significance?

But the IAF did hit some targets among their 50 strikes, including damaging what must have been a very problematic reservoir for Israel and what a genius idea striking at night was, all the terrorists were safely tucked up in bed and we didn’t have to kill any of them.

I’m wondering, when did it cease to matter what the targets of our strikes actually were? Is this simply collective punishment?

This game helps our politicians because they get to look tough, it helps Palestinians politicians of all shades because now they get to have a go at Israel. The only people who lose are all the rest of us. Which is bizarre because our politicians are supposed to be working to make our lives better.

Instead it seems we’re working hard to make their lives better.

The Palestinians will continue playing their game and we’ll continue playing ours. They’ll keep encouraging terror, paying terrorist’s families and offering their usual rhetoric of antisemitic incitement while rounding up and torturing any of their people who actually attack Israel.

We’ll keep talking about peace while building our settlements, we’ll keep talking about peace while striking their reservoirs, we’ll keep saying its impossible to negotiate with the Palestinians while privately negotiating with both the PA and Hamas on a whole range of things from cease fires to prisoner releases to tax payments.

And then in the run up to their elections we dive in and arrest a Hamas politician. Perfect timing. All the while talking about the lack of democracy among Palestinians.

As per usual it’s Israelis who are going to suffer as a result when Gazans get sick of Israeli planes attacking their reservoirs and rally around Hamas, when the missiles start flying thick and fast, missiles Hamas is able to buy and build emplacements for thanks to the fact that Israel allows Qatar to line the pockets of Hamas in a policy that sees Israelis both destroying Gaza’s terror infrastructure and ensuring the transfer of funds for them to rebuild it, practically guaranteeing a war every few years.

What this tit for tat nothing shows is just how corrupt everyone playing the game is and in the end it’s always us that gets screwed for it, the reservist who gets his head blown off for hearing the call when long, long before the bullets really start flying our government should have decided on a course, a coherent course, towards a better future for the Israelis who elected them into office.

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